http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com --
WHEN Hollywood honchos participated in a recent Sunday morning
get-together with White House representatives, the resulting "summit meeting"
produced great fanfare along with considerable trepidation. Leaders of show
business expressed an unabashed desire to help fight the war on terrorism, but
simultaneously worried that their efforts might become too closely identified
with a nationalist agenda.

Comparing the role of the entertainment industry in the current struggle to
Tinseltown's enthusiastic engagement in World War II, Variety editor-in-chief
Peter Bart commented: "The present conflict poses more complex problems
for Hollywood, however. There is heightened sensitivity to the possible
injection of propaganda into the media bloodstream."

This observation seems odd on several levels. First, anyone who suggests that
today's "media bloodstream" remains pure and unpolluted by propaganda is
someone who hasn't been paying attention. Movies and TV shows already
display a wealth of propagandistic messages, self-consciously preaching to the
public on Hollywood's pet issues.

Any episode of NBC's The West Wing, for instance, offers a rich array of
political posturing. On the Wednesday before the Hollywood summit, the
fictional president and his aides crusaded for gun control and an international
war crimes treaty.

Then there is the treatment of homosexuality. Some two dozen gay characters
turn up regularly on prime-time TV - and they all come across as decent,
funny and deeply likable. Many (if not most) Americans applaud sympathetic
treatment of gay themes as an important contribution in building a more
tolerant society, but no one can deny propagandistic purposes. By the same
token, the frequent reappearance of certain stock bad guys in movies and TV
- neo-Nazis, greedy tycoons, religious fanatics, industrial polluters,
right-wing politicos - suggests an agenda beyond entertainment.

With so many politically correct messages in so much contemporary
entertainment, why should the industry fear the inclusion of some new
pro-American, anti-terrorist themes - for instance, showing CIA or FBI
agents as consistent heroes, or Islamic fundamentalist schemers as bad guys?

Dedicated civil libertarians believe close identification with governmental
objectives represents a far more serious threat than support of the goals of
any private organization. Pop culture power brokers may advance the
environmental lobby's interests, for instance, but that force in American life, as
powerful as it is, remains far less formidable than the federal government and
the military establishment.

Hollywood's wary approach to the prospect of full mobilization in the war on
terrorism also reflects the collapse of reflexive, universal patriotism. Sixty
years ago, movie moguls unreservedly joined the rest of the country in waving
the flag and heralding America's greatness. Patriotism permeated every
segment of the society, because even elite opinion conceded that we needed
it, and we deserved it. We needed it because a nation of immigrants could
come together as one people only if we glorified common symbols and
commitments. And we deserved it because the Greatest Generation
recognized that America, with all its faults, remained by far the most
benevolent, generous and freedom-loving country in history.

In the past 30 years, the popular culture has adopted new themes that suggest
American nationalism is neither necessary nor appropriate. It's not needed
because multiculturalism now constitutes a more trendy, up-to-date model
than the emphasis on a melting pot that forges a single, national identity. The
heroic efforts of the Civil Rights Movement gave birth to an explosion of
"black pride," which led in turn to our current obsession with diversity and
multiculturalism. That obsession denigrates the notion of a single standard of
Americanism, built around shared patriotic themes, and substitutes the
concept of numerous, irreconcilable but equally valid forms of national
authenticity.

We've also reached the conclusion that old-fashioned patriotism is
inappropriate and undeserved. The wrenching doubt surrounding the Vietnam
War has brought about three decades of increasingly insistent challenge to our
traditional, unquestioned assumptions of national superiority.

Today's school children focus on the horrors of slavery and the mistreatment
of Indians, without the necessary perspective indicating that every other
significant nation practiced similar enslavement and suppressed indigenous
populations with far greater ferocity.

The current international crisis has fostered an explosive upsurge in patriotism
precisely because it provides us with new context for our national
shortcomings. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, we look at our
past and present with reference to an evil and implacable enemy - and
compared with the monstrous tyranny of the Taliban or Iraq, America's flaws
seem easily forgivable.

We also feel new urgency to transcend our differences (hence, the ubiquitous
"United We Stand" banners), and again need patriotism, with its cherished
songs and waving flags, to bring the country together for our common
defense.

The response of Hollywood will help determine whether our renewed pride
amounts to a major shift or a fleeting fad. No one expects top movie stars to
drop their careers and enlist in the armed services - as so many (Jimmy
Stewart, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable) did in World War II. Nor will the major
film studios and TV production companies engage as directly in creating
pro-war propaganda as they did in the 1940s; for one thing, those
corporations have become far more dependent on the support of overseas
audiences than they were then.

But even a slight shift in Hollywood's attitude would help the war effort at
home and abroad. Entertainment, for instance, might portray obsessive
anti-Americanism as poisonous, irrational and self-destructive - just as it
generally portrays racism, homophobia or anti-Semitism. We might begin to
de-emphasize movies (like the Oscar-winning American Beauty, or the
current, absurdly over-praised Life as a House) that suggest the American
suburban dream is actually a decadent nightmare.

If nothing else, such changes will help the entertainment elite connect with the
current nationalistic mood of the public it's supposed to serve. It's also
possible that a corresponding alteration of the pop culture will help us return
to a national consensus that in this diverse but inescapably decent country,
instinctive patriotic pride remains both profoundly necessary and entirely
appropriate.